I grew up in a farmhouse in Ireland where my mother baked every day. Tarts and crumbles and homemade bread, using apples from the orchard, rhubarb from the garden, and gooseberries from the enormous bush on the front lawn. I’m a healthy weight and I don’t do diets; I was raised to think of food as a gift.
And then I moved to Millburn, a posh New Jersey town, where food is the enemy. At the schoolyard gates, I was surrounded by skinny moms in high-end athleisure wear. In Ireland we call them yummy mummies; in America, they’re identified by a four-letter acronym that’s not PG-friendly. I found myself listening to baffling conversations about keto and paleo and gluten-free options. It’s not so bad, they said. You can barely taste the protein powder. And they’d move on to discussing Bonnie’s 5 a.m. spin class and how much it hurts. If it doesn’t punish my body, it’s not worth it, they said.
I was gobsmacked. I couldn’t understand the concept of punishing my body. I love my body. It’s a little squishy, but boy does it have fun.
Soon I was roped into the Parent Teacher’s Organization at the local elementary school. I’m a mother of three; it was inevitable. In my first year I spent an entire morning baking for a fundraiser. Little did I know that parents don’t necessarily bake for bake sales. Some of the yummy mummies bought $2 cookies at the local bakery and sold them for $1 at the fundraiser, because nobody wants to be overcharged at a school event. It would make more sense to forgo the trip to the bakery and just deposit the cash in the PTO coffers, but I’m guessing that nobody on the PTO majored in Math.
So I strapped on my apron and got to work. Strawberry almond bars, blondies, brownies, and my personal favorite, Nanaimo bars — a Canadian concoction with layers of chocolate coconut crumb, custard cream, and chocolate ganache. The trick is to keep them at room temperature, so that the chocolate and creamy custard melt on your tongue. I was already anticipating the delicious layer of crunch.
I’m a fabulous baker. I’ve won prizes. But here’s the thing: nobody ate my cookies. Nobody even bought them.
The yummy mummies hovered, swatting their kids’ hands away with a ‘don’t you dare touch that’ glare. Let’s pick something healthier, they said. Good luck with that, I thought. It’s a freaking bake sale. And they reached for the pre-packaged-chemical-laden protein bars.
Why organize a bake sale if you don’t enjoy food? I can’t even imagine what a mindmelt it must be — charitable donation versus calorie intake. But these clever women had it all figured out. Just drop a twenty dollar bill and don’t take any food. The kids get zero treats. At the bake sale counter, I was taking in hundreds of dollars and handing over only an occasional sugar cookie. Oh, the meltdowns I could describe, the little ones’ eyes wide as saucers when they realized they were getting nothing. The local fire department was the lucky recipient of the unsold baked goods.
And the privation extends beyond the kids. It’s extraordinary how the yummy mummies control their husbands on the kids’ birthday party circuit. Swiping plates of cake from their hands, lasering them with death stares. Honey, really? We talked about this…
Meanwhile, I’ve always encouraged my three daughters to eat what their body craves. In my family, we follow the 80/20 rule. It’s how I was raised. Eighty percent of the time we eat healthily and we indulge twenty percent of the time. Yes, we sometimes glance at packaging for calories and ingredients, but we’re not obsessed. If you want a square of chocolate, eat a square of chocolate. You can’t fool yourself by substituting a rice cake. You’ll end up eating the rice cake and a whole chocolate bar later. Depriving yourself, punishing yourself, it’s not healthy.
I set my kitchen up for success. My pantry is full of real food (fruits, veggies, whole grains) and there’s always something healthy bubbling on the stove. But we have treats too, lots of them. High-quality chocolate bars, Nutella, and popcorn of every variety. We eat whole milk yogurts because the low-fat ones are full of stabilizers and sugar. And I taught my kids to cook. Homemade soups using Trader Joe’s mirepoix, salads topped with avocado and heirloom tomatoes, and pasta dishes they find on TikTok. My youngest could make croquembouche when she was eight years old — a tower of profiteroles, stuffed with chantilly and drizzled with caramel.
And yes, teaching kids to bake and cook was torturous. My kitchen was in shambles for years. The cabinets and countertops were caked with flour and dough and misshapen vegetables, and every evening I had to scrub the sticky surfaces. But it was worth it. My three daughters know the joy of preparing and eating food.
I’m glad of it, because now that they’ve reached their teenage years, the food issues among their peers have gotten worse. Last year we were in a volleyball carpool, so I had a posse of Millburn teens in my car three times a week. I was basically an Uber driver, so they forgot I was there. My youngest was appalled at their snack choices. “Why do you eat this tasteless muck?” she asked.
“My mom won’t allow me to eat anything else,” said one of the girls. “My brother gets to eat junk food and whatever he wants. Not me.”
“At least you’re allowed to eat snacks,” said another girl. “I’m not.”
From then on, I left a basket of goodies in the back seat.
I’m not sure how many Millburn high schoolers have food disorders, but it’s common. And it’s not always the kids you’d expect. It’s a high-achieving town. Our neighbors are surgeons and lawyers and Wall Street moguls, and it’s a top New Jersey school district, so there’s always pressure on the kids. Naturally, when the stress becomes too much, they look to what they can control, and for girls, it’s often food, particularly if they’ve inherited their parents’ hang-ups.
In the early days of Millburn life, I found the yummy mummy bake sale story hilarious, but I’m not laughing now. I have three teenage daughters and if any of them develop a food disorder it could be fatal. A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5–10% of people with anorexia die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18–20% of them will be dead after 20 years, and only 30–40% ever fully recover. That’s sobering news. And it’s very close to home.
Luckily, I’ve had the good fortune of finding a true friend in Millburn — someone who shares my values, both in food and in life. Our daughters are not close now, but they were best friends when they were three years old. She’s my pickleball partner, my book club buddy, and my dog-walking companion. And though she’s the fittest person I know, she’s also a foodie, and a wonderful cook. We bond over recipes — roasted vegetable tray bakes, hearty meatball subs, and salads topped with rotisserie chicken.
Her daughter, a senior at Millburn High School, has an eating disorder. A very serious one. Treatment involves forced feedings, weigh-ins, and teams of nutritionists and therapists. Sometimes it’s so grueling that my friend can barely string a sentence together on our walks, and when she’s sobbing in my arms I think of the yummy mummies.
I shouldn’t blame them, but I do. I despise them for poisoning their daughters’ heads with nonsense, only for that poison to seep into the lunchroom. Skinny girls proudly announcing that they don’t do carbs and trading tips on intermittent dieting and fitting into that prom dress.
And I know that eating disorders are complicated and stem from many different causes. But these women have normalized controlling food, turning it into something that’s rationed and measured, rather than enjoyed.
My friend is hopeful that her daughter can go to college this fall, but it’s not a guarantee. Sending her away, knowing that she could suddenly start starving herself again, is terrifying.
I’m hopeful that my three teenage daughters won’t go down the same path. I hope they grow up savoring textures and flavors and the joy of breaking bread together. But as a parent, there’s only so much I can do.
Marlene May is an Irish writer from Co. Galway. She is an MFA student at The New School (fiction concentration 2025). Her short story “PTO Dad” was long-listed for the Aurora Prize in 2023. She has also been published on www.irishcentral.com and in the Connaught Tribune.
Comments are closed.